Santana gets another chance Friday

Angels right-hander Ervin Santana will make his fifth start since coming off the disabled list Friday night in Detroit. The results so far have not been good – an 0-2 record, 9.50 ERA and .373 opponents' batting average.

But Angels manager Mike Scioscia said he remains convinced that Santana is first and foremost healthy and fully recovered from his elbow injury. Santana's status in the rotation is not dependent on how much improvement he shows in his next start, Scioscia said.

“Ervin obviously needs some fine-tuning as far as his command. His stuff is not as crisp as we've seen,” Scioscia said. “But it's good. He needs to fine-tune it, fine-tune his breaking ball, improve his command.

“If a guy looks like he has the tools to compete and maybe has something he's working through, you're going to have a little more patience. If a guy is going out there naked and doesn't have the tools to compete, it's something we'd have to look at closely. I don't think Ervin is to that point yet. But there are things that, for his benefit and for our benefit, he needs to improve.”

Santana's velocity has been down as much as 5 mph. But Scioscia said he doesn't consider that a sign that Santana is still pitching with an injury or has yet to break through any mental barriers about trusting his elbow to hold up.

“There's no injury in there now or he wouldn't be out there,” he said. “If there was a fear factor (about his elbow), he would be throwing 83 mph – just guarding it, not turning it loose. This guy is throwing a baseball 89 mph.”

Scioscia attributes Santana's poor performance to a number of factors such as some “glitches” in his throwing mechanics and the need to regain arm strength and arm speed after being shut down so long with the injury. But he admits the team didn't expect to see this from Santana.

“We thought he was past that when he came up because he'd shown good command in his rehab starts,” Scioscia said. “The ball was coming out to the point where we thought he was ready for this. There's upside still but we thought he was ready for this.”

If Santana continues to demonstrate that he was not ready, the Angels could pull him from the rotation for a start or two (in favor of Matt Palmer) in order to give him additional time to work on his mechanics and arm strength on the side.

Off days on the schedule ahead make this a “possibility,” Scioscia admitted. But he said he didn't feel that was necessary with Santana now. He will get an extra day off (like everyone in the rotation) before his next start, Thursday in Tampa.

“The course of action we're going to pursue right now is to let him work on his stuff in between starts,” he said. “If that becomes a dead end at some point, we have other things that we can do.”

NOTES

Kelvim Escobar threw in the bullpen before Thursday's game and is on track to make his first major-league start since the 2007 season on Saturday in Detroit. … Reliever Rudy Seanez left Wednesday's game in Salt Lake with a pectoral muscle injury after striking out the only batter he faced. The 40-year-old has allowed one run in 3 1/3 innings at Triple-A since being signed to a minor-league deal by the Angels.

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